Towards the end of his travels, Eskandar, or Alexander the
Great,
came to a town at the edge of the world. The local curiosity was a
tree with two trunks of talking heads; the male trunk spoke by day
and the female at night. Intrigued, Eskandar visited the tree and
heard a voice prophesying his death. He is shown here standing before
the tree in bewilderment, his finger to his lips. The tree’s
mystical qualities are emphasized by the assortment of human and
animal heads. The absence of text lends the image an unusual
solemnity.

Together with Nos.
33,
34,
35,
36 and
38, this
illustration belonged to a splendid copy of the Shahnameh
commissioned by Timur’s grandson, Ebrahim Soltan (1394–1435),
son of Shah Rokh, c.1430.